1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to tool changers and more particularly to a manual tool changer for the robotic industry.
2. Description of the Related Art
Tool changers have been known in the robotic industry for numerous years. The prior art has many automatic and manual tool changers that allow a robot to change a tool automatically or with assistance from a user. Many of these tool changers must operate continuously during a year, this can have a robot changing guns and/or tools once per minute or one million times per year. However, in other applications the robot tool or gun may be kept in the same robot for weeks until the robot senses a failure and then automatically switches to a standby gun so minimum downtime occurs on the moving manufacturing line.
Numerous robot tool changing operations are designed and performed automatically without manual intervention. With many of these utilizations it is highly desirable for the tool changing apparatus to be a passive type, that is free from relatively expensive and maintenance requiring switches, motors and similar components. Furthermore, in the prior art it is desirable for the robot to be able to simultaneously interchange a plurality of tools during each tool changing operation if necessary. Many of these automatic robotic tool changers are very expensive to maintain and build because of the numerous parts needed to perform the automatic tool changing operation.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a simplified manual robotic tool changer. Furthermore, there is a need in the art for a reduced cost tool changer that is capable of manual operation while still being capable of changing tools once or twice a minute depending on the line.